James Wiggans, my great-grandfather, was born August 1st, 1881 to John Wiggans and Sarah McIntyre of 19 Eaves Lane, Chorley. He was baptized in the Church of England on the 6th of November, 1881 at St. James on Brooke Street. It was a fairly new church, consecrated only 3 years before in 1878.
His father John Wiggans was a cotton mill clamper, who was born in Leyland but moved with his family to Chorley sometime in 1876. His mother, Sarah, 34 at the time of his birth, was born in Scotland, in Lanarkshire, and it’s her line I now follow.
West Highlanders
As far back as I can trace, Sarah’s father’s people were West Highlanders from in and around the Firth of Lorn. Her great-grandparents John Kelly and Mary Johnston were married in the Parish of North Knapdale on March 6, 1780, which tells us they were born about 20 years after the Jacobite Uprisings.
I can’t tell you which of my ancestors fought in the Battle of Culloden – they came 2 generations before John & Mary – but I do know that the Davidson, McArthur, MacIntyre and Johnston clans, who are all part of this line, fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie against England. The Act of Proscription which followed their defeat in 1746 forbid the wearing of kilts, ordered the surrender of all swords, and removed all legal authority from the clans.
Sally Kelly, John & Mary’s daughter, was born in the west Highlands in Lorn Furnace, sometimes called Bonawe Furnace on Sept 5, 1781. She married her husband William MacIntyre, from the Parish of Ardchattan, in the Parish of Muckairn. Today, both places together have less than 2500 souls. Their son John MacIntyre, Sarah’s father, was born Sep 7, 1802 in the Parish of Muckairn.
All of Sarah’s family in that line – great-grandparents, grandparents and father – would have lived through the worst of the Highland Clearances when estates were intentionally shifted from tenant farming – which provided work and food for many – to more the profitable sheep farming – which evicted and displaced tens of thousands to industrial towns outside of the Highlands.
If you’re wondering how their family managed to hang on in Argyll through the clearances, it was principally because William MacIntyre was not a tenant farmer. He was a ship’s master – a mariner trained in and responsible for the navigation of a sailing vessel. His marriage record and his son’s birth record both reference his job on the sloop Swift in Oban, Scotland.
But his son John MacIntyre did not follow in his father’s footsteps and finally did leave the Highlands sometime before the age of 31. He traveled 114 miles to Larkhall, Lanarkshire, where he married, and where his daughter Sarah was born. He lived a shockingly long life for a coal miner, and survived to the age of 90, before dying of old age and chronic bronchitis on December 3rd, 1892, in the Parish of Stonehouse, in the care of his wife and grandson John Craig.
A Highlander, a Lowlander & a Sailor from Donegal
Isabel or Isabella Davidson was born on May 6, 1814 and baptized on February 8, 1815 in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, Scotland. Her parents were Catherine McArthur and Francis Davidson, a private in the Royal Lanarkshire Militia at the time of her birth.
His service was compulsory but he was not part of the professional military. County Militias were first raised in 1796 to defend the homeland against the threat of a Napoleonic invasion. They were demobilized in 1802, raised again in 1803, and disbanded again just a few months after Isabella’s birth.
But before, after, and probably during his military service, Francis worked as a cotton handloom weaver, though this was becoming an increasingly rare profession. Just as sheep farming had displaced their Highland ancestors, driving them south to textile handiwork, so too was the industrial revolution driving out Scottish textile handiwork in favor of the mills in northern England.
Catherine & Francis were married in Larkhall on October 5th, 1806. Their marriage, and their daughter Isabella’s death record, mistakenly record Catherine as a ‘McCarter’ but she was actually a ‘McArthur’, as her own death record attests.
Francis was probably born June 20, 1782 in Covington and Thankerton, Lanarkshire to John Davidson and Janet Twaddall, but the evidence for that is a bit thin. We do know he passed away before 1851.
Catherine was a lace tambourer – tambour is a kind of lace made by stretching a net across a frame and using a fine hook to chain stitch patterns in the netting. We know that her daughter Isabel and 4 of her granddaughters, including Sarah McIntyre, followed her into that profession, as did her great-granddaughter Dinah Baker Wiggans.
She and her sister Effy – twin girls – were born in Kilchrenan, Argyll to John/Donald McArthur, a sailor from Inishkeel, Donegal, and Mary Gilles from the Parish of Kilchrenan. They were baptized on September 11, 1785 in Tyree, Argyll – the most westerly island of the Inner Hebrides.
We don’t know when Catherine left the West Highlands but she was married in Larkhall at the age of 22 so it must have been before 1806. By 1851, she was a widow and described as a pauper and a pirn winder. She died at the age of 71, on February 26th, 1857 at 5:15 am on Wellgate Street in the care of her son Francis, and is buried in the Dalserf Churchyard.
Her daughter, Isabel Davidson, married John McIntyre, a coal miner, on December 1, 1833 – all in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, probably at Trinity Church. There was a big age gap between Isabel and John and they often fudged John’s age in the census, but we can work out from baptismal records that she was 19 when they married and he was about 31. Together, they had at least 12 children. We know that 5, and maybe more, did not live to adulthood.
They were: Janet, 1834-before 1841; Catherine; 1838-before 1851; Mary, 1838-1889; Isabel,1840-before 1851; Elisabeth, 1841-?; Sarah,1843-1909; Marion Young, 1845 – 1927; John, 1847- ?; Rachel Gordon,1849-1929; Catherine, 1852-?; Margaret, 1854-1855; Elizabeth Campbell Brown; 1856-1857.
Three generations of this family lived for about 100 years within a 2-3 block radius of downtown Larkhall on London Street, Wellgate Street and Raploch Street – which is a continuation of Wellgate after you cross London.
In 1841, the earliest census available, John and Isabella were living in London Street with 3 of their 4 girls. Their oldest girl, Janet, was staying around the corner with Isabel’s parents. Isabel’s older brother Francis, a coal miner, was living with them and another older brother – John Davidson – was a few doors down. By 1851, they’d moved to Wellgate Street where 4 of their 7 children joined their mother in lace making, and then moved several times more – all within that 3 block radius.
Sometime near 1891, Isabel and John moved for the last time to 10 Queen Street in Stonehouse, about 4 miles from Larkhall, where they both passed away in the care of their Craig grandchildren who were living at 8 Queen Street. Francis died in 1892 at the age of 90, and Isabella died there on June 21 1893, at the age of 79, both of old age.
Sarah McIntyre Moves to England
Sarah’s own story begins in Larkhall where she was born on February 20, 1843 to Isabel Davidson and John McIntyre. She was christened there, probably at Trinity Church, on April 2, 1843.
She began her working life as a lace tambourer at the age of 8, and possibly before. But millwork was rapidly replacing hand work and by age 17, in 1861, she was employed as a live-in barmaid at the Commercial Inn – a public house and inn with adjoining stables. It was just down the road from her family at 12 Raploch and Crossgates Street.
Sometime in the next 7 years, Sarah left Scotland and headed 172 miles south to Leyland, England.
She married John Wiggans in his hometown of Leyland at St. Andrew’s Church on March 14, 1868. She was 24 at the time, but recorded herself as 22 – possibly she was self conscious at being 5 years older than her intended. The ceremony was witnessed by James Wiggans, the groom’s brother, and Elizabeth Scott.
The banns were read out 3 Sundays in a row in the weeks just prior to the wedding and that confirms for us that the couple were both living in Leyland at the time of their engagement.
Their 1st child, Isabella Davidson Wiggans, was named for Sarah’s mother. She was christened 7 months after her parents’ marriage, on September 6th, 1868 at St. Andrew’s – but died a toddler in the summer of 1871.
There is a gap between Isabella and the couple’s oldest surviving child and it’s probably filled with more loss. We only know of 5 of Sarah’s children living into adulthood – John, James, McIntyre, the 2nd Isabella – who married Robert Jones – and the 2nd Dinah – who, being a nurse on the Cunard line, was able to visit her brother James many times in America.
We know of 10 children altogether: Isabella Davidson, 1868-1871, Leyland; John,1872- probably 1948, Leyland; Isabella Davidson, 1873-1955, Leyland; Robert, 1876-1893, Leyland, died age 20; the twins Dinah & Mary, 1877-1877, Chorley, died in infancy; Francis Davidson, 1878-1884, Chorley, died aged 5; James, 1881-1965, Chorley; Dinah Baker, 1883-1967, Chorley, age 84; McIntyre, 1885-1959, Chorley, age 69.
